And another popular Linux distribution pushes a new release out the door. This time around, it's openSUSE, as they just released version 12.1. Other than the usual latest and greatest version of all the open source desktops and associated tools, there's a few other interesting tidbits in this release as well.

I think that's interesting. My experience has been almost exactly the opposite to yours. My Linux installs, at least the big-name distributions, typically "just work". On the other hand, I'm constantly trying to fix or correct things on Windows. I imagine hardware accounts for a lot of the difference.

At any rate, I'm trying out openSUSE 12.1 now and it's been a solid experience thus far. If you hardware is compatible, I suspect you will enjoy it.